In Fields v. City of Philadelphia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently joined five other circuits in ruling that the First Amendment protects individuals’ rights to film police officers performing their official duties. The Third Circuit decision involved two civil rights suits by observers to police activity. The first involved an observer who was physically restrained from filming the arrest of an anti-fracking protestor. The second involved a university student who was arrested for trying to film police officers breaking up a house party. Each civil rights suit claimed the officers wrongfully interfered with the attempts to film.
The court unanimously agreed that each plaintiff possessed a First Amendment right to record the police and, that that right was violated in each instance. It rejected the trial court’s conclusion that First Amendment protection depended on whether the videographer intended, at the time of recording, to use the video to report or comment on police behavior. Instead, it held that the First Amendment “protects the public’s right to access to information about their officials’ public activities” and therefore bars the government from “limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw.” The court observed that private citizen recordings often provide “different perspectives” than official police recordings, such as dashcam videos, and “fill the gaps created when the police choose not to record or withhold their footage from the public.” We strongly endorse this aspect of the court’s reasoning and decision.
